Creative Arts Department Mid Year Update

 Total overview

Individual sheets to send home to parents

Maths with Tukutuku - Manaiakalani Cluster Teacher Only Day

 

Link to presentation

Manaiakalani Cluster Teacher Only Day

 

PD Presentation - Rhythm and Pattern

 Each department is taking turns to present a PD session on a Monday morning. This week was the turn of the Creative Arts department. We decided to focus on Maths and specifically, rhythm and pattern in music, design and art.

Link to presentation

Here are some of the rhythm drawing that everyone did in response to the music that was played.

Yoobee Open Day with Y12 and Y13 DVC Students

 My Year 12 and Year 13 DVC students had a great morning visiting the Yoobee open day seeing all the courses that they have on offer. This was a great chance for my students to see a wider variety of opportunities that are on offer if they want to continue with being creative after they leave school.

Link to Yoobee City Road campus It was very generous of them to allow us to bring 31 students.

Art Exhibition

 Last week, we had the pleasure of holding the first Tamaki College Art Exhibition. We held it at The Good The Bad gallery in Glen Innes and out opening night was Tuesday 5th November. 

Here is a walk though before we opened.

Here is the link to more photos and videos of the exhibition and opening night.

Reading in Visual Art - Understanding the Artists Interpretation

 Our second artist model in Year 11 Visual Art this year is Margaret Aull. We are doing a similar process to when we looked at Henri Rousseau earlier in the year - blog post here - where I am getting the students to fill in a worksheet using a variety of media looking at the artists' work. The reading for the first artist model was an activity practising scanning and predicting - blog post here

The planning for the artist model work is on the class website - Henri Rousseau - Margaret Aull

The reading for Margaret Aull was of a very different style. We were reading her written piece that goes along with her painting " Fiji, Ever Fiji". This work, both the writing and the painting, was Margaret Aull's response to the coup and violence that was happening in Fiji at the time.

The first thing that we did as a class was to watch a YouTube video of the trouble and we had a class discussion about what a coup is and what the violence was about.

I gave the students a big version of the painting and a photocopy of the artist's words. Mr Milford, our literacy specialist, had taken a copy of the work away with him to work on a strategy for the students to understand what was being said. Here are his planning notes.

The students read through the work at the same time as I was reading it out to them - Link to document

We had the students highlight everywhere there was a "noun group" so they could highlight and see where these things were and we could talk about what each one meant. They then highlighted all the action words / verbs in green so they could relate those to what as being said.

We were referring back to the large poster that i have on my classroom wall that has all of these elements highlighted. Link to poster here.

What we are doing with this work now is putting it into our sketchbooks with our media experiments of Margaret Aull work. We had already done a bigger copy when we were practising mixing colours  - blog post here, so we are taking a double page up in our sketchbooks to be able to fit everything in, especially the large piece of written work.

With my example that I always make for the students, I didnt like the clean page so I put painted sections on it before sticking the work down and then splattered paint across everything afterwards.

Here is a picture of Mr Milford working with the students, going over the written work, while I highlighted the words on the screen as we went over them.

I found this a much harder reading activity to do with the students as it was dealing with thoughts and feelings and reactions to events where the normal reading that I do with my students is around facts - materials and processes, dates of things happening etc.

Careers Expo - Art Gallery

 We had our annual careers expo this week, and we decided that the Visual Art and DVC department would put on an art gallery style exhibition of student work as a practice run for our big art exhibition next term.

We had been thinking about how to display the sculpture work for a while. This is the first time Tamaki College has done sculpture at NCEA so we had no prior way of displaying it and we really wanted each piece of student work to have its own plinth. We then had the idea of using concrete building blocks to build our own plinths that can be assembled and disassembled as we need them. Also, they can be built to the height we need.

So we found an Auckland company that could supply and deliver a pallet load of the blocks we needed and my senior class then got the job of moving them off the pallet into the back of the garage. With a piece of plywood as the top, the practice plinth came out looking just how we wanted it.

Our head of careers who was organising the whole event got hold of a load of old political campaign board. These are really big and plain white on the back. She told us to come and take what we wanted. As we wanted to display a lot of the students drawings and artwork, just relying on the wall behind where we were going to be in the sports hall was not going to be enough. We had the idea of taping up three of the boards to make a large free standing triangular structure. This could then be stood anywhere and have loads of space for 2D artwork. White gaffer tape which did the job on the corners really well and they stood up securely.

It was a big job in the days running up to the day, as we had a lot of photographing of student work to do and we then printed it out A3 sized. We used the same burgundy border around everything to link it all together. We made a shared Google presentation to do this and made the page size A3 so there would be no pixelating.

Link to presentation

We printed a couple of posters and one of the Year 12 students sculpture photographs onto A1 so they made an impact on the boards.

It was my lovely senior class on the day of the expo who got the job of moving all the blocks and boards.

We then set everything up. We had been given the area in front of the doors so the gallery was the first thing people saw as they were entering the expo. We took advantage of this and went either side of the door so people had to actually walk through the gallery to enter.

We got lots of good feedback on the night, gave out lots of flyers and hopefully inspired some students to choose Visual Art or DVC next year.

Reading in Visual Art - Scanning and Predicting

 It has got to the point in my Year 11 Visual Art class where we have to start reading about our artist models so information about them can be included in our sketchbooks.

The first artist we have been looking at is Henri Rousseau. We have been looking at his work in terms of experimenting with different media to do copies of sections of the work. 

We started our reading today. In my inquiry last year, I spent a lot of time looking at how to do information transfer with my classes. Marc Milford, our literacy specialist, is keen for students to learn how to scan and predict. He took a text I had found online and made me an example of how to do this. Link to document here I felt a little overwhelmed by the size and content in this document so I had a go at making a lighter one to use today. Link to document

After showing this document to Marc before the lesson today, he felt that it still needed some work so he came to the lesson with an addition to it as I had not included any work on scanning. Link to document

When we started the reading, we had our guest reader from last year, Ms George. The students had to read along and use the table on the document to record any words that they did not understand.

After the reading we talked about those words and we looked up the meanings together and discussed them.

The students then re read the the document and underlined the key words from Marc's document as they read.

Playing the BOOST Game with the Whole Staff

 During our last whole staff PLD session, the 5 CoL teachers presented where we are up to - blog post here

At the end of that session, we got the whole staff to play my BOOST game, which is based on inquiry teaching and planning. Blog post here about the BOOST game and where it is on the planning site is here.

After this PLD session, I sent a Google form around to staff to get some feedback about the game.

Were the instructions clear enough?

Yes

From what I could hear, yes. I also read the instructions on the screen. We also had them on a Laptop in front of us as well.

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Only when there is tie was not explained .

How did you feel about reading a scenario out in front of your group and then having to come up with a solution?

It was good having to think on the spot as most scenarios in the classroom happen on the spot as well.

Initially I felt nervous but once it was my turn, I was okay.

Interesting as we had some different and some similar ideas of how we would solve the problems.

I liked that the scenarios we could relate to.

Fine, it's very similar to the conversations that we have during the day

I was happy and the scenarios were true to class situations. The feedback encouraged collaboration.

Ok.

very useful

It challenged me to really think what I would do and some I as a teacher should do rather than giving excuses.

How did it feel to get feedback about your answer / idea from the rest of the group?

We didn't really give feedback this time as everyone had a clear strategy on how to handle the scenario.

It felt good getting feedback because what you do, someone else would do differently and you could use it for next time if the time arose.

Good

Felt great & encouraging

Yeah, fine - we were a pretty affirming bunch

Absolutely wonderful and uplifting. Much more, it showed that they were standing with me and saying, "we hear you, we are with you".

It was really good

very useful

It helped me to reflect and how I can improve . Helpful

Did you like giving feedback to others about their ideas on the scenarios?

We didn't really give feedback this time as everyone had a clear strategy on how to handle the scenario.

Yes, it reassures them that their solution is good and also the feedback was constructive

yes

Only sometimes

Yeah, it was fine.

Yes indeed , I did.

Yes

Yes

Yes definitely and a good way to exchange ideas to grow in this profession

How do you think the game could be improved?

Possibly give some scenarios that aren't as common, so we can learn how to handle them if needed (although we didn't get through too many cards, so maybe there were some in there).

More time given to verbally give instructions. Have the cards ready for players, as it what hard to figure out who needed what card from the pack. The scenarios could be a different colour from the rest, to stand out more.

Nothing at the moment

Great as is

Go cards-against-humanity style, where people have a certain number of cards to play, and the person who read the card has to match answers up with players.

Have written instruction explaining how to play the game and even add some point system to it.

?

good enough

I find it very interesting. I don’t think it needs improvement.

What was the best part about playing the game?

Hearing how other teachers would handle the different scenarios, as it gave me some ideas on how to approach similar interactions with students.

The support you give and get within the group about your scenario and solution. It gets those who usually don't speak, a chance to speak.

Listening to others solutions

sharing with other teachers and hearing what they do in the same situation.

Laughing with new people

Answering the question and giving feedback.

Sharing of ideas and listening to what others have to say

Learning about different opinions

Collaboration between the members .

Here are some of the staff playing the game

Planning Support - Card Game

 I have blogged about my planning support work with my 4 teacher trainee mentees before

Planning Support

Planning Support - Help Videos

Since then, I have started talking to them about Teaching as Inquiry and about how it should be an ongoing thing. I spoke about this to the whole staff during our last CoL presentation.

Staff PLD - CoL Presentation 2

Since then, my 4 mentees have been working extremely hard as they have a pile of deadlines coming up for university. This got me thinking about doing something fun when the deadline is over so I have tried to design a card game based on thinking about your planning.

I have put all of the resources for the game and the instructions on the planning site that I have made for them - link here

I am hoping that we get something out of this activity, being honest with what we think about planning and have a bit of fun while doing this.

The Game Cards

This presentation is set up to print 4 cards on A4 paper, back to back, so you have the card info on one side and the game logo and coloured background on the other side.

The Instructions

Using the Cricut Machine

 Subsequent to our Manaiakalani Teacher Only day where I presented on how to use the Cricut machine, most of my group have met twice this last week to continue learning.  We will continue over the next couple of weeks.

Planning Support - Help Videos

 I have written earlier in the year about being a mentor to 4 trainee teachers this year. Link to blog post here As part of that, I have been making some help videos to support them in the use of Google Sites and Hapara Workspaces. These are both requirements for teachers to use in their planning and presentation of work to students.

I have made two pages on the Planning Support website, where I have included links out to other sources of information and help and short help videos that I have made. I have kept the help videos short, so that a specific topic can be watched without looking through lots of other information and they can get that information quickly.

Link to Google Sites Help page

Link to Workspaces Help page

Staff PLD - PB4L

 

This is what our team thought of the current PB4L chart and how it is used currently.

We then filled in the self assessment tool to see where we thought we were at in our own classrooms.

Planning Support

 This year, I am mentoring 4 students teachers and helping them with their planning. I meet with each of them each week and thought it would be a good idea to centralise everything that we talk about over the year.

A Google Site seemed like the ideal way of doing this so I have started putting together a site that covers everything that we talk about either individually or all together. This will be useful for when they forget what we talked about (there is so much for them to complete from the uni!!! ), so they can just look back at the site for reminders, support, templated etc.

Here is the link to the whole site

This was started in March 2023 so it will grow over the year to include more of the content we cover.

Describing the problem

During our CoL meeting today, we were asked to not try to come up with an answer for our inquiry yet but to try and focus in on what the problem is. We were also asked to not think too widely as the problem becomes unmanageable. We need to be more specific with a particular problem that is happening with our students so that we have the possibility of doing some thing positive to solve it.

While I was listening today and thinking about my inquiry the word INERTIA came into my head.

I felt that this really summed up my problem. When I am working with a student or a small group, I am the force that is acting on them and they get along really well.

As soon as I move away from them to help some one else, that force is removed and they stop moving forward.

My inquiry problem ...

• How can I keep the inertia of moving forward going on without me being there as the applied force. 
• How can I make the path smoother so that a movement that has started can keep going.
• How can the movement start if I am not there to apply the force in the first place? (eg, in a lock down)

Inquiry Question 2 - Inquiry Focus

 From what you know already about your classes and your school’s profile and leadership goals for the year, share a possible inquiry focus.

My inquiry is based on accelerating student achievement through differentiated, multi-modal learning via the subject website.

I have been thinking about how to combine all that I have learned through previous inquiries, in CoL, Class onAir and Innovative Teacher 2014 and 2015

Historically, what has been happening in my class is that I do a lot of one to one work with students and while that is happening, there is a lot of nothing going on with the rest of the class. They lack confidence to continue on their own so drift off to doing not a lot.

My style of teaching is whole class demonstrating then on to one to one help where it is needed. 

The make up of my senior classes is always mixed. Mixed NCEA level, mixed experience in the subject (NCEA Level 2 and Level 3 students who haven't done it before) and mixed ability within all of that.

My thoughts were around creating an environment with my class site that will support the students to continue with their work in a self motivating way. They need to be able to get on with the work without the teacher being there next to them the whole time. This will be good both in the class and if they have to work from home ( for example, during any lock down experience again).

I want the site to make the students feel they have the confidence to know what they have to do, how to do it and where to go to get help. 

Initial Plan

Ways that I am thinking at the moment that I could use ...

• A layout that is easy to understand and follow
• Examples made so they can see what they are aiming for
• Step by steps either in screen shot form or screen cast video form
• Everything in one place so they know where to go for whatever they need
• Links sent through from calendar invites so this becomes the normal place to find the day to day instructions - this also lets them see what has been done in previous lessons
• Structure and templates available for written analysis based on literacy and SOLO research over the past few years
• Allowing group work to happen during some tasks to build confidence
• Developing a positive mindset

Goals

This addresses the school goals in this blog post here in the section where I was talking to the Deputy Principal

1) Maori achievement

2) numeracy and literacy

3) student well being

4) teacher wellbeing.

Inquiry Question 1 - Inquiry Focus

 Brainstorming student inquiry foci - Collaborate with your school’s leadership team and colleagues to identify areas where your inquiry will make a powerful contribution to wider school and cluster goals.

My Initial thoughts

My general idea is to use what I have learned from previous inquiries, class on air and innovative teacher and combine them with my class site in a way that can support students in a much more comprehensive way than it does at the moment. 

At them moment in my class, I spend a lot of time helping students one to one as their projects are very different and so they need individual help. While this is happening, the rest of the class are not necessarily doing what they should be doing and staying on task. This has an overall effect on how much work is completed and how long everything takes.

I have instructions and examples on my class site, but I feel it is not substantial enough to fully support students to work through tasks in a more independent way in the class and this became extremely apparent during last year and into this year and the lock downs we have gone through.

Collaborating

I have spoken to 3 members of Middle Management and Senior Management about my initial inquiry thoughts.

Below is an outline of what they said as i was explaining what I thought my inquiry could be this year.

HOD Technology

• Differentiated Learning - pace, depth, multi modal
• Enabling student centred learning
• Pedagogical - allowing students to achieve, accelerating student achievement through differentiated learning.
• The depth comes through from those students who are hitting the higher levels. Achievement is accelerated both within a level and over different levels.
• It is very teacher dependent at the moment which means that if the teacher is not there, the work stops.

Deputy Principal

• The school goals are based around : 1) Maori achievement,  2) numeracy and literacy, 3) student well being, 4) teacher wellbeing.
• Are you identifying Māori students in the classes - is there things in the website that link to them? Partnership, participation, protection
• Partnership - are the students working in partnership with you or each other during the project work?
• Participation - How are they able to participate with the work and how can they put themselves in it ?
• Protection - how is their identity as Māori able to come through in how they are doing the work?
• Literacy has been built in from the previous work done that you have done.
• The work is accessible at school and at home. Multi faceted work which is a bonus. Having the support available at all times without the teacher. They always know where to get help.
• A resource to build on once it has been set up. It can be improved as time goes on but there is peace of mind that the work is all there. Work can easily be set for a reliever if the teacher is not there or if we go back into another lock down.

Executive Dean

• Meeting the learning styles of all students - visual, kinaesthetic, listening.
• Developing on prior knowledge skills and consolidating new learning.
• Non threatening learning style - can approach it how they like.

After having these talks I am able to state what my inquiry will be in a more concise way.

My inquiry is based on accelerating student achievement through differentiated, multi-modal learning via the subject website.

Breaking Down my Inquiry for 2020

This year, the focus for my inquiry is my Year 13 class. I will be looking at ways to improve the standard of achievement for the whole class by focussing the planning for the 4 potential scholarship students.

Here is the breakdown of how I plan to do this.

Pretty Workspaces

I have been practicing using Hapara Workspaces with my intermediate students. I wrote a blog post about it here.
This week, I have been sat with Lenva getting a bit of PD as I hadn't done anything with the work that the students had submitted till I saw her. I was nervous of doing something daft and loosing the work. Lenva took me through the marking, the spreadsheet that is generated with all the marks on it and how you can send the work back in two ways - one to keep working on it and resubmit and one as the final return. I had been worried that I would loose the connection to the work once I sent it back as this was the main reason I was FINALLY getting my head round workspaces in the first place. Lenva put my mind at rest over that.

While I was with her, she showed me how you can search for other people's public workspaces. Very handy! She then showed me one that she had found that had been made very visually attractive by the use of headers and colour.
This reminded me of a PD Lenva did with us a while back and she gave us a presentation that she had put together of all the card colours put onto proportionally correct pages that can be downloaded as images and used as headers for your workspace cards.

Here is the blank presentation with the colours -

Here is my copy which is quite messy as it has the slides on it that I have copied and used to create header images for my workspace cards. So far I have been making the first workspace I will be needing with my seniors pretty. This is the jumpstart one which I will need in a couple of weeks time. Here is the link to the workspace. I think it makes it much more visually appealing and not just plain boxes with writing in them. Thanks Lenva. Here are the other workspaces I am fiddling with at the moment (as of writing, unfinished, just saying) Level 1 Chair Design Level 2 Lighting Design